Carnival of Bad History #14: Backlog Edition

Welcome to the "Post-Grading Letdown" edition of The Carnival of Bad History.

epppie at Progressive Historians presents a short history of the "sucker born every minute" line, and a drawing in honor of the opening of the new Creation Museum this coming Monday (that's the bad history part). PZ Myers is gathering posts for a mini-carnival in honor of the biblically literal, anti-evolution extravaganza. When you're done reading John McKay's take-down, you can also check out his rant about "the African language".

Joerg Wolf presents Historical Comparisons: Fritz Stern Publishes "Five Germanys I Have Known", which includes some lovely examples of former SecDef Rumsfeld's argumentum ad nazium.

Jon Swift presents Conservapedia which "gives Christianity its due for being so supportive of the work of Galileo and Copernicus." The scary thing about that is that I've heard versions of that argument elsewhere: that Christianity is at the heart of the scientific revolution....

Speaking of satirists, Mark A. Rayner presents Grandfig: Flying Nun: Mark I posted at the skwib. Heh!

Tim Abbott presents "Jumping" Jack Flashman "Massacres" the Historic Record posted at Walking the Berkshires. It's on the internet, it must be true....

Speaking of error propogation, David Parker presents Willie Lynch: The Making of a Slave posted at another history blog. Follow the links, folks: it's worth it. If you teach US history and haven't come across it before, you will soon.

Sergey Romanov does what he does best -- present real evidence and reasonable interpretation for stuff certain people would rather distort or forget -- this time taking on the well-known pro-Stalinist Grover Furr at Holocaust Controversies. In addition to the historical questions, there's an interesting ethical discussion about posting email exchanges.

The Tour Marm presents The Baptism of Pocahontas: Capitol Offense - Get it Right! posted at The Educational Tour Marm. Wonderful discussion of teaching, internet and public history issues, all spiced with righteous outrage.

Henry Midgley presents Bernard Lewis at the AEI posted at Westminster Wisdom. Midgley was not the only person to note Lewis' historical laziness, but he's the only one who submitted!

CapeTownDissentator presents Mission Accomplished: Now Let's Write Us Some History, a discussion of the relationship between servile narratives and political apathy.

That concludes the submitted material. To avoid derision and confusion in the future, submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of bad history using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our Sidebar.

Now, a few supplemental items from my files:

Will the public domain stay public? Konrad Lawson notes some brazen attempts to copyright public domain documents. Ralph Luker and Tim Burke note other problems with copyright and permissions.

Brett Holman, when he's not revising our very weak understanding of Guernica, is swooning over bad historical fantasies that never got made into movies. Or, you can see the Giant Nazi Robots over at Orac's place.

Sepoy says that Richard Gabriel's military history of Islam's founder "has, on average, a mistake per sentence." I could identify about one per paragraph without trying too hard.... Speaking of Sepoy, he's tweaking the nose of the AHA, but they're good-humored enough about it that they've approved our panel -- token and all -- anyway.

Tim Burke takes on a Weekly Standard piece on Africa on both facts and interpretations. Oh, and he smacks down VD Hanson and 300 in one blow! (for more 300 fun, start here)

In the "Daily Dose of Insanity" category, This Day in Mythstory provides just what it says: anniversaries with a theme and a twist! If you can't tell when he's kidding, that's a good sign that you need more, not less, history in your life.

Another entry in the "one generation's sarcasm is another generation's Protocols of the Elders of [your hobgoblin here]" category: Anti-Grover Cleveland screed turned into pro-Hawaiian Independence "evidence."

Eric Muller got a surprise this Passover: a Confederate Jew on his Matzo Box. I got one of those, too.

One of the most efficient reminders of what the late Jerry Falwell stood for in his heyday (and beyond) came from this 26-point "Don'ts for Students". It's in favor of history (though the rest of the list suggests limits on that), but not family history, or any creative thinking or social speculation.

Chris Bray's been reading some Frederick Kagan, for kicks: the preface is a hoot.

The Conceptual Guerilla takes on Harvey Mansfield on the unitary executive.

Rob MacDougall posits a dystopian future for historically conscious appliances. But at least our modern appliances let us eat better than we used to.

I've got to end on a positive note: These reconstructed photographs are amazing. For real!

OK, now the bad news: Bad History Needs Hosts even more than it needs submissions. We've got a trickle of submissions, but No Hosts lined up for the future. I'm taking volunteers, and then I'm just gonna start assigning months to people who seem capable, whether they're bloggers, historians or just cranky.